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Comment by cwp | Hacker News Reader

Except consumers aren't choosing between Apple and not-Apple. The second-strongest brand in the survey is Dell, preferred by 12% of respondents. You really think that focussing on Apple, with a brand 4x stronger than its nearest competitor, is just spin?

Here's another quote from the article: "Apple has more than double the brand appeal of BlackBerry, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung combined." Care to spin that another way?

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But for Android consumers, hardware manufacturer is usually a secondary choice. I won't contest that Apple's ahead, but all this survey really points out is that Apple has more control over their branding - consumers have no need to distinguish between Apple, iPad, and iOS. Sure it's not beneficial for manufacturers (in terms of market share) to be competing within a single brand, against a company that controls its brand entirely - that's pretty obvious. It doesn't support a conclusion that "customers want iPads, not Tablets", however, since customers mostly aren't framing their purchasing decisions around hardware manufacturers.

Again, I'm not saying Apple isn't dominating, but it does seem like the question was written with the conclusion already in mind.

Well, except that it doesn't matter for average consumers. If you read the article closely, what the consumers want is to get a tablet and use it comfortably. Why should they bother if they want 7" or 10"? Heck, why should they even bother to think about that?

This is different from a TV screen size, you don't have to hold the TV but you definitely need to hold the tablet, too small and you can't get your things done, too big it would be annoying to hold on to it as well. It does prove that Apple had done research and a lot of testing to get the correct size. Once this correct size is being pushed out, I don't see why consumers would want to prefer other sizes.

Note: When I say consumers I refer to average consumers, geeks like options and customizations, but average consumers don't want to be bothered by these.

I don't have access to original Bernstein materials; does anybody know how they define "brand appeal"? Apparently Apple has over 66% of whatever that is (such that their fraction is "more than double" the remainder), and yet only half of the respondents "preferred Apple over all other brands".

As AllThingsD certainly doesn't pass along a definition of "brand appeal", in the context of the article that 66% claim is neither fact nor spin. It is nothing at all.

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